September 15 ~ 1967 strain - characteristics

The Times (below), in its one brief mention of vaccination and that it is not going to happen, reports that it is the view of "experts" that

" even if tests show that the pigs were incubating the disease the risk of them releasing virus into the environment in a way that could contaminate other farms is very low."

This raises the question of whether this strain really is the same as that in 1967. The 1968 Northumberland Report available on warmwell for 6 years now, was an excellent, succinct and scholarly report written in the plain English of unspun government. It was hardly mentioned in 2001 and has been pretty much ignored for forty years. Of the strain shared apparently by both the UK in 1967 and Surrey in 2007 it says:

"Pigs were found to excrete a much larger amount of the virus than either cattle or sheep."
Further the maximum recovery of virus from cattle and pigs occurred before the vesicles had ruptured and in sheep even before the appearance of lesions."

It goes on to say - again of this 1967 strain:

"It is considered that the virus can be carried by wind, if the conditions are ideal, over distances of more than sixty miles.
This approach will be valuable in dealing with future outbreaks particularly in indicating where to look for secondary outbreaks associated with wind spread once a primary outbreak is reported." (more)

Assuming that the virus is not some genetically modified super-strain worked on by Pirbright that cannot be eradicated, this leaked virus is what we are told: the British 1967 O strain "O1BFS67". If ring vaccination is not used urgently now, we foresee a worsening and desperate situation, not only for the farmers but for the country at large. Shortages lead to high prices. Farmers going out of business makes the UK even more dependent on imports - which, in the worsening financial and energy crises, may not be always available. Let us create a vaccination zone in the South of England, regionalise and get the EU to rethink its Directive.